Some instructor notes.
Materials needed
These are the materials that instructors should ideally have on hand for the session.
- white A0 sheets of paper. You will need about one sheet per four workshop participants
- boxes with ~12 crayons each in different colours. You’ll need about 1 box for every 8 participants. These are really cheap (<1USD per box) in the summers, when teachers restock)
- print-outs of figures to critique. There are some examples of figures in this repository.
Choosing Figures to Critique + Improve
The examples in this lesson were all carefully chosen to be visualizations produced by official news outlets and graphic design agencies. When choosing other figures, take care not to choose figures from papers that were written especially by students. Take care that the figures chosen are unlikely to created by anyone in the room, or if this is the case, be mindful about asking permission.
Facilitating the Wireframing
Wireframing is a standard design technique, where sketches of future designs are produced and edited before a final version is produced (e.g. on a computer). There is also research that people tend to consider digital products as ``final’’, and are thus less likely to offer feedback on those products. Creating sketches on paper, and framing this as a wireframing exercise helps learners to be somewhat less emotionally invested in their products, and thus be more receptive to feedback.
If possible, aim to hang paper on the wall, rather than letting learners spread paper across tables and cluster around a table. Hanging the paper on a wall means that everyone in a team is facing their shared goal (the poster), rather than each other: this helps groups share ideas and discuss them honestly by making the inherent positioning less confrontational.